Vanilla Peach Soup with Cardamom Cream

Fresh farmers market peaches pureed with orange juice, sweetened with blueberry honey, flecked with fragrant vanilla seeds, topped with exotic cardamom cream . . . Doesn’t that sound fabulous? That is what I thought when I saw this Cooking Light recipe by Jean Patterson and Danae Campbell (from August 2000, not on Cooking Light’s website).

The perfect use for my Melicks farm peaches.

So easy, so delicious . . . This recipe highlights the goodness of fresh peaches and adds a sophisticated twist.

Here is what you do: puree 2 pounds of peeled peaches (the original recipe said three peaches, but I needed many more to get the suggested weight) with 1 1/2 Tbl. honey and 1 1/2 cups orange juice. Before pureeing, you could also do as the original recipe suggests: toss the peaches with sugar and vanilla seeds and roast them at 350 degrees for about a half hour. I skipped this, and the results were still wonderful. I used some vanilla bean paste to add the rich aroma of fresh vanilla, but vanilla extract would be okay, too.

For the cardamom cream, the recipe calls for mixing sour cream and cardamom. I swapped in some Tofutti Sour Supreme for the sour cream to make it dairy-free. The resulting mixture was a little blah, so I added some agave syrup and it was just right. If you wanted to make this vegan, you could use agave instead of honey in the soup puree as well.

This can be made in advance. It tastes delicious even a couple of days later.